This LS 2014 Elections ... will you, the voter, make a promise ?

“The AAP will make no promises to you. Instead it will ask you to make a promise. This time you will not cast your vote on the basis of kinship. You will forget caste; you will drive away the distributors of alcohol and money. AAP has not come to ask you for your vote. If there is anything we ask of you, it is to have faith in yourselves; and to listen to the voice of your soul. This election is not about the victory or defeat of political parties; it is about victory or defeat within ourselves. In front of the voting machine, we must think of the future of our children, the future of our city and our dreams for the future of our country.” Short link http://bit.ly/meera4mumbai

On FDI value creation assessment before deciding ..... a matter I had personally debated in Sep-99 explaining (to our BJP Govt.) that Market Capitalisation is a Multiple of a companies revenues whereas salaries & remunerations are a fraction. For Indian investors to be able to invest in the subsidiaries of MNCs listed on Indian Stock markets, was therefore a boon. Therefore Indian bourse listing of MNCs (suitable policy framework) must be encouraged and not discouraged, as Yashwant Sinha's budget of 1998-99 discouraged. 100's of MNCs de-listed thereafter and almost no MNC has newly listed on the Indian Stock Exchanges since.

Election time is a strange period for working out the
relation between the stated and the unstated. The language of realism
helps articulate the obvious. Realism claims to be pragmatic, obvious,
palpable and predictable. The real is what you are sure of and can even
invest in. One feels confident of the real. Consider Varanasi. People
feel Mr. Modi’s victory is obvious. Mr. Modi, they claim, is larger than
life. He seems inevitable. When Mr. Arvind Kejriwal stands challenging
Mr. Modi in Varanasi, experts appear dismissive. They argue that Mr.
Kejriwal’s challenge sounds futile and unreal, a children’s crusade no
one is bothered about. It is the Modi juggernaut that sounds real. Even
the media sounds definitive about it, claiming it to be a no-contest.
The miracle man of the Delhi elections appears naive and less magical.
But the real has a way of dissolving as categories change, as
definitions alter, as debates shuffle patterns. One is tempted to ask
what Mr. Kejriwal is trying to do. Is it to defeat Mr. Modi in the
election or is it to delegitimise him? Is it an electoral battle or a
symbolic crusade? Can Mr. Kejriwal’s quest be read differently? One can
understand this better when one contrasts the battle of Baroda with the
struggle in Varanasi.

Simple equation of forces

When
one watches the old Congressman Mistry contesting as the Congress
candidate from Baroda, one sympathises with him but there is no
resonance. Mr. Mistry’s battle is pure electoralism. The Congress has to
set up a candidate and it does so. There is no challenge to categories,
no resonance of a different sort. The Modi-Mistry tussle looks and
appears like a simple equation of forces. The pluses and minuses are
clear. The Congress has maintained a semblance of dignity by setting up a
gentle warhorse against the Modi machine.

The battle
for Varanasi is different. As Mr. Kejriwal announces his candidature
and embarks on a train, Mr. Modi recites a Prasoon Joshi poem. It is
nationalistic enough but one worries more for Prasoon than Mr. Modi. An
advertisement confused as a poem, recited in an old-fashioned way is a
harangue. The poetry of a nation drains out in what reads like a
predictable catechism. Maybe, someone more tentative and playful than
Mr. Modi could have read it better. It sounded more like a loyalty oath
to be forced on reluctant citizens than an invitation to fight against
forces destroying the country. A poet like Subramania Bharati could have
done a better job. Sadly, poetry is often a more difficult task to
master than patriotism.

Watch Mr. Kejriwal as he
folds hands on the train. His appearance is normal, almost tentative. He
is confident, yet waits shyly as if waiting for Varanasi to invite him
to contest. Mr. Modi seems to claim Varanasi as a right. Mr. Kejriwal
understands the rules of hospitality and representation. He moves in
more coyly and tentatively.

There is a second tacit
contrast. Mr. Modi sees the Varanasi of Hindutva. Mr. Kejriwal claims a
more relaxed but lived Hinduism. He signals a holiness, which allows for
difference, which generates the secular. He hints at the Varanasi of
amity, of many faiths rather than a saffron Varanasi. For Mr. Kejriwal,
the colours of Varanasi go beyond saffron and he is not ready to yield
the symbolism of saffron to the Sangh Parivar. There is a quiet contest
about what it means to be Hindu without invoking the opposition of Hindu
versus Muslim.

About a new political era

Varanasi
thus becomes a definition for a different political battle. The recent
Delhi election was about defeating a decadent Congress. Varanasi is
about inventing and invoking a new era in politics. Varanasi breaks the
Bharat-India, Muslim-Hindu divide that Mr. Modi seeks to enforce.
Varanasi is about the empowerment of categories and people. Sadly, the chaiwala has now become the agent of corporations. When the chaiwala
is an Ambani man, Mr. Kejriwal asks this: who then is the common man we
seek to empower? Mr. Modi seems to present himself like a collection of
dogmas, a god-given diktat; Mr. Kejriwal is experimental but is clear
that Mr. Modi is the one to be defeated and in Varanasi.

One
quietly senses Mr. Modi as a political text being reworked from the
centrality of Gujarat to the cosmos that is Varanasi. In a cosmic space,
a development agenda as a petty form of clock time seems secondary.
Justice makes more sense, empowerment sounds more relevant to the
Gujarat of Modi. The development model shrinks before Varanasi. The
notions of development and nation state have to confront bigger
civilisational questions, even go beyond the standard polarities of
secular/communal, development/non-development. Mr. Kejriwal is
suggesting the battle is different, that he and even Mr. Modi are
irrelevant. The choice and challenge before India as a civilisation, a
nation, a democracy and a community is to decide what kind of a decent
society we want to be.

It is in this context that we
have to read the symbolism of the two campaigns. The Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP) seems to place savage wager on Mr. Modi, even if it
cannibalises a party. One feels a twinge of pity to see an old guard
cast away because as old soldiers they refuse to die or fade away.
Watching Jaswant Singh cry was I think demeaning for the party because
he felt what was insulted was the discipline of old loyalists. One
wondered whether the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was so desperate
for victory that it was ready to fragment the party. Yet, one wonders if
Mr. Modi really trusts the party as his cadre of enthusiasts seems to
operate parallel to it.

Secondly, Mr. Modi seems to
appeal to Bharat, yet is confounding it with saffron waves. The point
Mr. Kejriwal is tacitly and quietly asking people to open themselves to
is that it is precisely Varanasi as a way of life that is a challenge to
Mr. Modi’s politics. Varanasi as a holy city allows for the other
without treating secularism as the other. It seems to suggest that some
forms of the holy instead of becoming intensely theocratic create own
thresholds of the secular and the syncretic like a persona called
Bismillah Khan.

A question for India

What Mr.
Kejriwal is asking is that Varanasi become more reflective and,
therefore, initiate a more dramatic investigation of Mr. Modi and his
politics. He is asking India whether the Congress and the BJP as parties
are the limits of the dream. Is Indian politics to be a little Punch
and Judy show between the decadent and the conventional? What Mr.
Kejriwal is saying is that he is only a trigger. It is India that has to
decide what kind of a polity it wants. The issue is no longer about Mr.
Modi but of the eternal question of empowerment. In fact, he is
presenting himself as a comic clown against Mr. Modi as king and asking
what Mr. Vajpayee asked of Mr. Modi — what is Rajdharma? Does the
emperor’s new clothes, which he calls development, tell us something
about the middle class? Who then talks of the marginal? Is power always
frozen at the top or can it melt and coat an entire system? In asking
these questions, Mr. Kejriwal is inviting India to the new possibilities
of democracy.

Let us not be naive. Mr. Kejriwal’s
trip is like a pilgrimage. Mr. Modi’s organisation is like an army that
is camping. Mr. Kejriwal’s attempts in terms of political scale would be
modest. His message is like a conversation, homely, humble, even
deprecating. Mr. Modi has the persona of a loudspeaker, amplifying his
own repetitions. Mr. Kejriwal has place for the small and marginal, for
the gossip of the nukkad. He is a listener. Mr. Modi’s persona
comes out better as a dictaphone. But the contrasting styles are a
signal to the contrasting messages of the two opponents. Mr. Kejriwal is
content to be the quiet catalyst who changes not just electoral
democracy but the drama of citizenship. Mr. Kejriwal is leveraging
Varanasi to challenge the Gujarat that Mr. Modi presents. It is a battle
of texts, discourses, messages which will be deciphered again and
again. In this lies the value and drama of Indian Democracy.

(Shiv Visvanathan is a professor at Jindal School of Government and Public Policy.)

Below is a wonderful mail sent by a colleague in response to a critical mail he received :

Dear Rajan:

Thanks for your mail and my response is delayed because I wanted to give it time.

I know Arvind for about close to 23 years now and have seen him from
the time he got into IRS from TISCO, fought corruption, won the
Magsaysay award till where he is now.

Arvind has set himself goals that are nearly
impossible to achieve; taken paths that none of us dare dream venture
and has seen the very bridges created by him burn't by others. And all
this for the love of India.

If I expect him to be flawless,
expect to give him no rope to fail, and yet desire that he deliver the
impossible that none of the 800 million Indian adults could; then I ask
myself, are my lofty standards at fault or is Arvind at fault?

I really do not know if he will be occupy a high place in history or
confined to its dustbin. I don't think even he does or he cares. But I
can tell you one thing - India won't get another like him for another
generation.

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AAP is the first party that says 'give us your vote and you shall rule': Aamir Khan

Lok Sabha 2014

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Why AAP is a better choice

i am with MEERA are you ?

Meera Sanyal – AAP Candidate Mumbai South

A distinguished career in banking spanning over 30 years, Meera relinquished her position as CEO and Chairperson of Royal Bank of Scotland in 2013, to devote herself full-time to public service. During her time at the bank, Meera mentored the MicroFinance program, which financed over 650,000 women in rural India She also chaired the bank’s Foundation, providing livelihood assistance to 75,000 women-led households in threatened ecosystems.

The daughter of late Admiral Hiranandani, a highly decorated naval officer, Meera stood in 2009 as an independent candidate for the Lok Sabha elections in the aftermath of the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai. Meera and her husband Ashish, campaigned for and raised funds for the AAP in the 2013 Delhi elections. She was recently appointed to the party’s National Committee on Economic Policy.

Meera is a Board member of PRADAN, a member of the International Board of Right to Play, a global NGO that uses the transformative power of play to educate and empower children facing adversity. Meera is also a Board member of Liberals India for Good Governance – the Indian Liberal Group, and serves on the Supervisory Board of Jaihind College. She is a member of various National Committees of both FICCI and CII. In 2011, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, invited her as the sole Indian representative on her International Council on Women’s Business Leadership.

Meera

Arvind Kejriwal at CII

Why did Arvind Kejriwal resigned as the Delhi Chief Minister?

Well, here is the answer.

AAP got only 28 of 70 seats in the Delhi Assembly election. Still, the Lt Governor invited Arvind to form the government, as the Congress (with 8 seats) had offered unconditional support. Finding it hard to believe, Arvind sent a letter to the Congress President listing out the 18 points in the AAP manifesto, including passing of the Jan Lokpal bill. The Congress reverted saying it will support AAP unconditionally on all 18 points. With this commitment, Arvind formed the minority government in Delhi.

However, when AAP presented the Jan Lokpal bill in the Assembly, the Congress and the BJP came together to ensure the bill is not passed. The Aam Aadmi Party had won the vote and trust of citizens of Delhi on the plank of anti corruption. And since the minority government could not pass the Jan Lokpal bill that was promised to citizens of Delhi, Arvind resigned.

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